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September Sunday

I’m in a grumpy humor this morning. I know why. I ate too much coconut cake yesterday. I baked the cake…really cupcakes..for David’s birthday, number 85 which he celebrates this week. Then I ate about half the cupcakes. No, I’m exaggerating, he and I ate half the cupcakes. These cakes are a delicious gluten-free recipe which produces a spongy cake. Tastes good and is delightful to chew. But that’s not all. I made seven-minute fluffy frosting and topped it with coconut. I made two batches of the frosting, the first with Splenda, the second with real Domino sugar. The first failed, the second worked well. But I love the fluffy stuff…reminscent of soft meringues or divinity fudge.

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My mood just brightened. My daughter texted that her hubby will come by this week and trim the rose bush out front. Good, It’s so overgrown (and a climber), it looks like Repunzel lives here. Above is a photo of the Lady Banksia rose bush one spring a few years ago. Its beautiful in springtime, but a pain in the back and shoulders the rest of the year. As you can see we have added extra supports to hold it up. A Lady Banksia in Texas is the largest rose bush in the world.

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Part of my bad humor is owing to fruit flies. I don’t know how they found their way into the house, but they found the fruit I had on the kitchen counter and infested it. And they multiply …. like fruit flies.

Remember biology where we learned about population change by reading about fruit flies? Like any creature, they reproduce, then eventually outstrip the resources in their environment. Next comes population collapse. It can happen to any population. Perhaps even humans?

I’m walking around the house and telling each fruit fly.. Die, damn you die, and sometimes I am fast enough to dispatch one.

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I found a great book The Improbable Man, by Clive Finlayson. He’s the paleoarcheologist (or biologist?) who recently found cave writing in Gibraltar which he attributes to Neanderthals. (BBC and NYT). His discussion centers around the critical need humans have for water, and how during ancient times they pursued water to the ends of the earth…literally.

Finlayson also argues there is no such thing as modernity, and Neanderthals and all those other human-like primates were not precursors to “modern” humans, but human…like us. Good old Clive (another Oxford guy), he likes to stir things up a bit. Now thinking about the book cheered me up…back to my iPad.

30 thoughts on “September Sunday”

Ah the good days and the not so good days! All part of living. As long as I can get my Blue Bell Chocolate Chip Ice Cream! I had a rose bush once that would have taken over the whole back porch, if not the yard. It lost its fight with some kind of fungus a couple of years back. I’m not battling fruit flies just now; it is the mosquitoes that are horrendous. Bazillions of them. I’ve been dressing in long pants and a hoodie and spraying myself with Off just to go fill the bird feeders. If my barn swallows were still here, they would be feasting on the little blood suckers. Hope you have a wonderful day!

Always enjoy your rambling and your moods (even the grumpy ones); I don’t write well about bad days so I don’t … my blog makes me sound like Pollyanna. (Not that I write WELL at all — but at least the happy days don’t make me sound like a whiny bitch. (Your sense of humor shows through when you write about the not so good stuff and it’s fun to read!). But better of course when nice things happen — like getting the yard help you need.

Fruit flies love our house in Oregon this time of year. I am sure as soon as we get there and open it up they’ll drop right in on us completely uninvited. (Even before we visit the farmer’s market … because I’ll have my white wine and they love that!).

Oh my, those roses are beautiful! And so thick with blooms. But I’m glad you’re getting them trimmed. Those pesky fruit flies are a pain in the twat, aren’t they? Hate those things! Hope you have a good rest-of-the-week!

I would like to read The Improbable Man. Anything on that subject fascinates me. Yesterday I was reading an article about Russian scientists who had found frozen 30,000 year old fruit in fossilized ground squirrel burrows in Siberia, and they actually grew a plant from it with the prettiest flowers. Fascinating! I wonder if they found any fossilized fruit flies, ha!

Ah sugar, tastes so good it’s so bad for you. I made a lemon bread over the weekend. Since Gregg retired I find myself baking more. He loves lemon bread and I got it into my head to make it at 9.00 o’clock at night when I sudden had this surge of energy. Strange! But oh that lemon bread was sooooooooo good! Thank you Inez Garten!

Here is one way to decrease those nasty flies , small jar with vinegar in the bottom maybe an inch or half inch, put saran wrap over the top of jar ,secure with a rubber band, poke small holes in plastic wrap, then watch the little suckers get in and die ! Cider vinegar works best. If you don’t have vinegar small bit of ripe fruit works also just messier to clean up. My downfall isn’t sweets it’s salty,greasy, hot things like hot wings, pizza with peppers,fried chicken Cajun style.Since I live out in the woods miles from town [they don’t even deliver pizza] Unless I make it myself I’m not having any. So I put Crystal hot sauce on lots of foods or pepper vinegar.

Why do we vow things will never pass our lips – then open them wide enough for a bus to pass through ??
My roses are presently started to come into leaf again after their annual haircut. (Still no Daffs – Freesias are out tho’)
Cathy

I helped beat the cake for the speaker’s meeting tonight, and after it was in the oven, I got a really bad case of IBS. Ugg. We had little pink roses growing all over the breakfast room area, and in back were little tiny yellow roses over a long pergola. I loved those two.